


Foul and fair

by BuildingGsr



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24813109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuildingGsr/pseuds/BuildingGsr
Summary: Set during episode 9x01 "For Warrick"."Only in that moment Grissom really realized that Sara was at home again. And he missed her even more, because he knew that she was not going to stay. He knew that he would've asked her, but he also knew that she would've refused."
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle
Kudos: 4





	Foul and fair

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by a line in the movie MacBeth:
> 
> "So foul and fair a day I have not seen."  
> [You can find a complete version of MacBeth [here](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html)]
> 
> When I heard that, I thought it would be perfect for Grissom in episode 9x01 _"For Warrick"_ : it was a tragic day for him, because of Warrick's death, but also a good day, because he could see Sara again.  
> So that night I wrote this. The story involves also events from _"Happy Place"_ (episode 9x02)
> 
> It came out a bit sad, but the moment Grissom and Sara live in those episodes required it. Hope you like it. Enjoy!
> 
> Snapshots used for workarts are from: WPAP | JFO  
> I would also like to thank Sidle77 for letting me use the pictures from the funeral in the cover image.--
> 
> First publication on [my website](http://buildinggsr.altervista.org/): Feb. 9, 2016  
> Last editing: ~~June 20, 2020~~ January 2021  
> ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

# FOUL AND FAIR

Grissom would have held Sara in his arms for an endless time, just to give voice to the tears being forced up by what he had lived the night before. Those arms of his, which only a few hours earlier had held a body becoming colder and colder, were now holding the person he most cared about among those inhabiting the great blue terrestrial globe. If only he had been able to instill a bit of that warmth he was feeling in Warrick's body, that warmth so human, so natural. Natural like even death is. If only science had found a way to make the lymph flow, to make the heart beat, to make the blood circulate, to make the lips move in a smile... but then again, he  probably would not have  fallen in love with science , Grissom's mind realized. One more second and he, reluctantly, left Sara's embrace.

He kept her near though and she stared straight at his eyes, and understood. That night he died too. Some certainty had cracked and his whole structure was giving. Grissom, in front of Sara's eyes – eyes that he had looked for for so long since she left Vegas – felt too exposed. For a moment he felt like when she used to watch him with eyes full of admiration and he didn't want to admit to himself that he loved her. Sara's hand delicately leaned on his cheek and that warmth, again, made him feel at home, not alone anymore.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” he murmured.

Sara smiled, held his face in her hands and kissed him. The sweet taste on his lips brought him far away, back in time. And again he felt the longing to leave, just like Sara did. In that moment he was able to understand what put her on the way to the airport, that day of almost a year before.

“You're not MacBeth,” she whispered, still holding his face.

Grissom swallowed and felt all his guilt weigh on him.

“But just like him I'm afraid I'll be tormented by nightmares,” he confessed.

“You have no guilt, Gil. There was nothing you could do.”

Grissom looked away and a grimace of pain contracted his face. Sara had the impression she saw him go pale.

She made him sit, for once on one of the chairs opposite the driving seat. Just like the situation he was living – he, along the night shift crime lab team. It was not the first time they lost a man, but Warrick...no, not Warrick.

Grissom couldn't leave Sara's hand and the filters of his mind – just like he told her the afternoon Sara confessed to him what her nightmares arose from – the filters of his mind were playing against him and conjured up the whole scene again and again, detail after detail. Details – his so beloved details – that he would have wanted to forget, have them erased not only from his own memory, but from mankind's history as well. No, not Warrick.

“I could feel his life...” he whispered, unsteady, talking to himself.

Looking up, he found Sara again, sitting in front of him, and he knew she was there for him, even more than for Warrick. He told her how everything went, just like she had narrated her worst day to him. He didn't feel better, but he knew she could understand.

Then Catherine and the other members of the team arrived and Grissom forced himself to be focused on what had to be done. Sara was so thoughtful and to hear her voice not from the other side of a telephone made him miss her, as if she wasn't there. As if she hadn't come back.

The day of the funeral arrived and almost nobody noticed the days that had passed since the night of Warrick's death. Their bodies did, though; their minds, unconsciously, did too. All of them were destroyed. All of them, no one excluded. And they were dazed, still, as if they really couldn't realize what had happened.

They shared the buffet and were able to smile for that time that Warrick said or for that time that Warrick did. Stories seemed to be suggested by Warrick himself, as if, next to each one of them, he whispered the words right in their ears.

Then everybody went back home.

***

Only in that moment did Grissom really realize that Sara was home again. And he missed her even more, because he knew that she was not going to stay. He knew that he would've asked her, but he also knew that she would've refused. She had left Vegas because of the death of a boy. It would've been impossible for her to stay, after the death of a friend so dear to her.

He felt sad, like he had a premonition – him and his damn chess which made him think two or three moves ahead of the present: he heard Sara's voice in his own ears, “Come away with me” it whispered, with a more persuasive voice than that of Ulysses' mermaids. And just like Ulysses he prepared himself, exactly like when he used to deny himself he didn't love that woman so much younger; he prepared to plug his ears and deny – deny everything. He prepared to deny himself he wanted to leave with her; to deny himself, again, a life; to deny he was hurt. He prepared to deny evidence – he, who in his job did nothing but look for it, for evidence, in order to unmask crimes and deceits. Would his crime have gone unpunished?

Because it was nothing but a crime – another, the umpteenth crime that that city put in front of him: it was a crime not to leave, not to run away, not to move out of range. A crime against himself. A suicide. There was no other word than suicide to describe what was going to happen a few days from then.

Sara gave him a new life, a beautiful new life with her; but his own old life was too big, mature and well trained to miss the opportunity to kill that little creature arisen from the crumbs of his soul – crumbs that a spring with hazel eyes and a bright smile had revived, making them spin in little whirls, like the breeze does to leaves in summertime.

He added something alcoholic into the tea he’d poured in the two cups and made his way to the bedroom.

She looked like Christ on the cross: she was still wearing the funeral dress, her arms were out to the side, lifted just a bit higher than her shoulders, and her hands leaned against the edge of the open wardrobe doors.

“Hey...” he called her. She started and turned to him, staring at him with a strayed face. “Tea time,” Grissom told her, walking in the room.

He tried not to pay too much attention to Sara's lost eyes. He left the cups onto the bedside table and approached her, starting to help her change. Only then did Sara realize that she should’ve been the one doing something helpful for him, after his experience with Warrick, and felt guilty for still being paralyzed by grief .

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly, head down, while Grissom slipped out her jacket. He put it on a hanger. “I should be the one helping you,” she said desolately. He eyed her with a loving smile.

“Your presence here is the biggest help I could wish for,” he replied, seriously.

With a nod of his head, he told Sara to lift her arms: he took the top edges and made it slowly slip over her head, leaving Sara wearing only the bra.

“It's nice to have you here again,” he said, moving to the bed, where he laid down and carefully folded the top.

She half smiled and observed that it would've been better to come back for other circumstances. She watched Grissom, who moved to the chest of drawers and opened the t-shirt drawer, looked inside, as if he were looking for one in particular. He stopped for a moment, standing still, and then he wearily shook his head, as if to dispel a fly. If only one could do the same with bad memories, Sara thought. Grissom finally took a t-shirt and turned towards her.

In that moment he realized that she was half naked and deliberately spent some time watching her: shoulders, arms, the breast covered by the bra, going down and stopping on her belly. He had the confirmation of what he had thought when he first saw her in his office a few days before.

“You have put on some weight...” he observed with a knowing smile, on his way to her.

“It's not very nice to say it out loud,” she objected.

For the very first time since Sara had met him again, Grissom smiled in a sincere and, if one might say, happy way.

“You did cut your hair,” he observed, taking the tip of a lock of her hair with his fingers. He watched her one more moment and said, “You look good.”

*

Grissom could have never foreseen that fate's irony would've walked in. On the off chance Sara could have changed her mind whether to stay in Las Vegas or leave, in fact, fate played its cards.

The case involving Pamela Adler's husband arrived like an avalanche that, on a sunny day, flows over a quiet mountain path where one is just for a walk after lunch. And that avalanche took away chess, chess table and hopes, leaving Grissom with only his premonition.

When he came back home, after closing Paula Bonfilio's case, finding it empty, Scott's words resounded in his ears, “Have you ever loved someone so much that you would kill for them? I do.”

“I do,” Grissom said in a whisper.


End file.
